


Take It Off

by Skulker



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! Series
Genre: Awkward and Embarrassing, Belligerent Sexual Tension, M/M, No Romance, Post-Series, ShrimpshipWeek, Shrimpshipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 12:35:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13123839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skulker/pseuds/Skulker
Summary: In a practice game before their real match, Haga and Ryuzaki decide to mix up the rules with...interesting results.





	Take It Off

**Author's Note:**

> Written for ShrimpShipping Week 2.0, for the 'preparation' prompt. 
> 
> I feel like a bit of a fraud using the Japanese names, but I play Duel Links with the Japanese voices on, so that's how they sound to me now. Haga is using something like one of my real DL decks, but do me a favour and don't think about the actual mechanics of this duel too hard.
> 
> Thanks for reading.

_"...and the winner is Dinosaur Ryuzaki!"_

Normally, Ryuzaki loved hearing those five little words, but today he accepted the applause with a frisson of unease in his stomach. Making it to the semi-final was a good thing, especially considering the bumpy ground his _Duel Monsters_ standing had been on over the past few years. But this time-

"Looks like you'll be facing me tomorrow after all," a voice said from behind him, followed by the expected nails-on-chalkboard laughter. Ryuzaki turned to see Insector Haga grinning at him

"Yeah, sorry about that," Ryuzaki shot back, putting his deck back into his box. "And you were doing so well, too."

"Aw, you think you have a chance. That's lovely."

They sort-of-smiled, sort-of-glared at each other for a long moment before Haga clapped his hands.

"Come on, pack your things up and let's get out of here. Your match seemed to go on for years, and I'm starving."

"Eh?" Ryuzaki said, eyebrows high. As was usual for tournaments now, they had found the few restaurants in town that catered for both their very different tastes, ate, hung out, and played practice games every evening, but he was still surprised. After all, when they played tomorrow it would be the difference between settling for bronze, or the chance at gold. "Thought you'd prefer to be by yourself tonight?" 

"Why? What's the difference? I duel you all the time, I'm used to beating you," Haga said. 

Ryuzaki shouldered his backpack. "It's just, you know. We've been lucky that we've barely had to play each other in knockout matches the last few tourneys, and never this high up the ladder."

"And?"

"You get...stressy." Before Haga could launch into the defence, he placated, "you've got better! But, man, you still hate losing."

Haga looked nettled. "So do you." 

"Yeah, well..." Ryuzaki said, then trailed off as they worked their way through the crowd. They had both grown up a lot since the days where they would actually risk their souls for a chance at victory. Ryuzaki was now generally happy to accept the ups and downs that were inevitable to anyone that didn't have a God Card in their arsenal. Haga...well, at least he was no longer so desperate to win that he would flagrantly cheat to ensure it, and he could lose a match without careening into a self-destructive revenge cycle. That was about the best you could say. "Look, I don't like losing, but if I have to lose to someone I'm glad it's you. So if you do beat me tomorrow I guess I'll be OK with it - although you better stomp the final and get gold." He gave Haga a side-eye. "Can you say that?"

"It'll be fine."

"Really? Because I like being cool with you. I like having you on my side. You always fight my corner, and I know I can count on you," Ryuzaki said. Haga gave him a guarded, snake-like smile in return, clearly anticipating the 'but'. "But do you know what one of the best part about being friends with you is? It's that you don't see me as a rival any more. Because when someone's your rival, you still become the most monumental bitch seen since _Mean Girls_. So...let's not do that."

"Of course not," Haga said. "In the unlikely event I lose tomorrow, I'll be...a little bit annoyed, yes, but I'm not going to bite your head off."

"You sure? Because the last time I beat you in a tournament, it wasn't even a knockout match and you still called me a 'smug prick' for the next three weeks."

"Yeah, well, don't be smug prick about it then," Haga huffed. "God, and you say _I_ get stressy. Look, lets just eat and play a duel."

So they found themselves in Ryuzaki's very budget hotel room eating take-out and picking through cards almost exactly as usual. The one minor difference was, despite Haga's insistence he was fine and all was well and everything was normal, there was an atmosphere of real spine-crushing tension among the usual ceaseless insults.

This came to a head when they started arranging their decks for their practice game and Haga said, with the most appalling fake spontaneity, "you know, what with the match tomorrow, I feel we ought to make this game a little more exciting than usual."

"Yeah?" Ryuzaki said guardedly.

"I feel like we should have some sort of stake, some sort of wager..."

"Oh, hell no. You know I have nothin' to bet." Ryuzaki flopped back on the bed. "Don't start this shit."

"Are you _planning_ on losing?" Haga said, with a high laugh. "Well, it's good to see you're going into tomorrow with the right attitude, I must say."

"I'm just not going to go all out today, that's all. I'm not even using one of my standard decks. You were determined to play tonight because you're thirsty for pointers on my strategy, and you ain't going to get them."

"Ryuzaki, I already know your strategy - it's called 'Big Dinosaurs get me Sexually Excited' and I've seen it a thousand times. You're just scared you'll be demoralised if you play against me, aren't you? It's okay, I understand."

As always he rose to the bait despite himself. "No, I'm playing, alright."

"Good, then I suppose we should put the stake at, oh, I don't know - a thousand yen?"

"That's my food money for the rest of the tournament."

"Oh dear," Haga said innocently, putting his head on one side like a cat. As usual with Haga, his efforts to look innocent just made him look somewhere on the spectrum between 'creepy' and 'actually evil'. This wasn't helped by the fact he was wearing what Ryuzaki thought of as his 'Marvel Supervillian Glasses', because they were round steel frames with a death's head moth over the bridge and looked very _Hydra_ , and rather incongruous with the rest of his rather formal clothing. "You'll just have to wager one of your cards, then. I suppose I'd accept a _Sabersaurus_ \- I can always use a high-attack level four card as fodder."

"Nope, there's none of your dumb bugs I want."

"Dear, oh dear," Haga said silkily, and grinned so he showed his pointy little canine teeth. Ryuzaki resisted the urge to put his smug face in a full Nelson. "I thought you were more of a sportsman than this. What do you suggest, then?"

In desperation Ryuzaki wracked his brains for something Haga would have to back down from, and the angels provided. "Strip," he blurted out of nowhere.

" _Strip?_ " Haga echoed with a slow blink.

"Yeah, strip. Take 'em off. You won't talk so big when you start to get cold."

Haga's face was a picture. "You want to play Strip Duel Monsters?" he said flatly, eyebrows disappearing up under his bowl cut.

"We can't play for cash because I don't have any. I'm not risking any of my cards ever again, not since Red Eyes. You seem determined to have a stake of some kind. So yeah. Strip. Monster destroyed in battle or a direct attack equals one item." He sat back, delighted to have out-assholed Haga. "What, too embarrassed of your scrawny ass?"

"No," Haga said immediately, and Ryuzaki was intrigued to see he'd made him blush. He _was_ embarrassed. Still, he rallied immediately to his faithful standby of quibbling about the rules. "It's just not fair in terms of handicap. My deck is built around expendable monsters, I'll always lose twice as many as you."

Ryuzaki grinned, pleased to have Haga on the back foot making excuses. "Yeah, well, we're even then. Since you dress like an old man, you're wearing about twice as many clothes as me."

"Hmmmm." Haga drummed his nails against his chin. "Fair point, I guess you're not wearing much," he conceded, and swept an uncomfortably penetrating gaze over Ryuzaki from head to toe and back again. Ryuzaki had never had anyone so obviously and calculatingly try work out what he had under his clothes, and he found the effect dismayingly predatory. However, before he could change his mind about the idea, Haga signified he was happy with his internal calculations re. his _Pinch Hoppers_ vs Ryuzaki's spring wardrobe by bursting into cackles so evil that he was verging into Disney villain territory. "All right," he said. "I'll do it, I'll _play_ your sick little game, Ryuzaki. But know I'm just doing this for you, for your soul. I need to teach you a lesson for trying to pull a upright, stalwart, good boy like myself into your depraved schemes."

"Are you serious? You're going to play?" He hadn't expected _that_.

"What, don't tell me you were trying to bluff?" Haga's expression bought to mind a dozen cliches about spiders, parlours and flies. "Tsk, tsk, Ryuzaki - you can't bluff _me_. If you threaten me with Strip Duel Monsters then you better be ready to feel the breeze." He examined his nails. "Unless, of course, you're as certain as I am that you'll lose. I suppose it's only fair to give you a chance to take the coward's way out."

"No way. You want the chance to see me naked that bad, I'm not going to take that away from you."

They set about the usual preliminaries of sorting out decks and game mats and so forth. The hotel room had no table, so they shifted the couch back and set up the board on the floor. Ryuzaki hesitated by the window.

"Guess we should shut the blinds," he said, suddenly feeling slightly awkward.

Haga gave him a curious look from under his bangs and shrugged. "Guess we should." 

He did it and then, as it was quite dark switched the side lamp on. The room suddenly seemed very private and intimate, and he sat on the floor on his side of the board wondering how they got into these bizarre situations. Sometimes the usual boundaries between him and Haga...well, they got a little bit blurry. Kind of handsy. Sort of intense. Usually, however, there was stress or alcohol involved as the convenient explanation and he didn't have to think too hard about it afterwards. Suddenly he felt like this evening could go dangerously into that territory, and he was stone cold sober. Suddenly he could hear his pulse.

His normal confidence returned, though, as he shuffled his deck. If _Duel Monsters_ had taught him nothing else, and everyone seemed to agree it hadn't, it was how to shuffle cards. They flipped between his fingers like he was a Las Vegas card shark, and Ryuzaki was heartened as his army of, let's be honest, fucking awesome dinosaurs flashed past. He would win this without it getting too weird, and he would win again tomorrow, and somehow it'd be alright, and Haga would stop calling him a prick eventually and no one would be actually gay.

Haga went first. He set a couple of traps and a card in defence mode, before Ryuzaki summoned _Gagagigo_ to slaughter it. It was revealed as _Pinch Hopper_ , as expected. He let Haga fuss around, starting his _Ultimate Insect_ thing off and then said, "well?"

"Are we really going to do this?" Haga pushed his glasses back up his nose. "This is your last chance to keep your dignity, Ryuzaki."

"Less stalling, more stripping," Ryuzaki threw back. "You wanted a stake, you got one."

"Fine," Haga said, and demurely took off his watch.

"Whoa, whoa, no. I knew you'd pussy out. That is not clothing and you know it."

"Yes, it is. I'm wearing it, aren't I?"

"You're also wearing a shit-eating grin. That's not clothes either."

Haga dropped his watch to one side with a smile. "Look, if you're going to argue technicalities you should have defined the terms before you started the game."

"I did, I said 'clothes', not..." he cast around for the right term. "...jewellery."

"You said 'strip'. One monster, one item. It was a item on my person and I stripped it off."

Ryuzaki stared at him for a moment, then broke into a smile of his own. "Alright, that's how you want to play it, bug boy. That's how we'll play it. I end my turn, and invite you," he held up his right arm, "-to go-" he grasped the sleeve of his hoodie, "and fuck yourself." And he simultaneously flipped Haga the finger and pulled his sleeve down to reveal a bracelet and two rubber wristbands.

"What!" Haga spluttered.

"Thanks for reminding me about all these extra _items_ on my _person_ , bud. Had me worried there for a second."

"You're so childish," Haga said, tossing his head.

They played on, evenly matched and gradually shedding smaller accoutrements until Ryuzaki managed to destroy _Rising Air Current_ , and easily pick off three wind monsters that had been relying on it to stay safe.

Haga grumpily took off his green blazer, and Ryuzaki was dismayed to see he was not only wearing a tie and a shirt, but also a waistcoat he hadn't noticed. "Where did you think you were going when you got dressed this morning? A wedding? A fucking society ball?"

"I have standards," Haga said primly, and Ryuzaki couldn't help but watch the movements of his hands as he pulled the knot of his tie all the way down and slipped it from his neck. Haga glanced up and caught his gaze, and Ryuzaki hastily returned his eyes to his cards.

They sat in silence for a long moment.

"Well?" Haga said at last. "Are you going to end your turn any time soon?"

"Dude, I killed three monsters and you took off two things. You need to keep going."

"I took off three," Haga said. He fished in the pile of clothes until he pulled out a tiny piece of metal like a silver hairclip.

"The fuck is that?"

"It's a tie clip," Haga said. Ryuzaki looked actually baffled, so he clarified, "to keep my tie straight."

Ryuzaki glared down at his cards, muttering a crack about Haga needing help to stay straight that he didn't dare say out loud in the circumstances. What he said out loud was, "you are such a little bitch for technicalities. I would love to see you on trail in court; you'd put the fucking lawyers in jail."

Not long after, a solid line of dinos was spun round by Haga's _Windstorm of Etaqua_ trap card, which subsequently cost Ryuzaki both socks and his hoodie when _Grasschopper's_ effect mowed them down. The socks he didn't mind, psychologically, but the hoodie was a substantial piece of clothing, a major barrier between him and the world. He felt ten times more naked without as he sat back and smoothed his hair back into approximate order. 

Haga seemed to read his mind, and grinned at him. "Looking rather chilly over there. What are you down to? Three pieces?"

"Yeah," Ryuzaki conceded, trying to think of a way to multiply his faded Metal Greymon T-shirt, his jeans, and his shorts into more clothes. "What have you got? Two socks, shirt, frickking stupid waistcoat, pants, I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and guess you wear normal underwear and you're not like the Rocky Horror under there...so six items. No belt? You missed a trick there."

"Why would I wear a belt _and_ suspenders?" Haga smugly pushed the top of his waistcoat aside to show the strap over his shoulder.

"For fuck's sake. Seven, then, and god knows how many other random items you'll whinily argue the toss for - handkerchiefs, pocket fluff, fillings. I hope you don't have a damn pacemaker, because you'd probably try to take that out."

"Ohoho, you don't have to pretend to be upset, I don't judge," Haga said kindly, adjusting his glasses. "With our duelling records it was obvious this was going to end up with you stripping off for me. I can only assume you proposed this game to fulfil some strange exhibitionist urge you have. Don't worry about it, I'll indulge your little fantasy if it makes you feel better about the defeat waiting for you tomorrow."

"Keep dreaming," Ryuzaki said, bushing despite himself. "I can still pull this back."

"I would love to see both that and the subsequent sainthood you get for performing a modern miracle."

Ryuzaki drew and then laughed. "Wish granted," he said coolly, and started rummaging through his graveyard, tossing cards aside while murmuring, "banished, banished, banished-" 

"What are you up to? "

"Clearing the reptiles out of my graveyard to special summon this bad boy," Ryuzaki slammed _Evil Dragon Ananta_ in the centre of his monster zone, "with three thousand attack points."

Haga gave a little scream of rage, and then watched with helpless loathing as _Grasschopper_ bit the dust. "I'm going to destroy you," he said quietly, unbuttoning his waistcoat.

It was some turns until Haga could do more than just defend himself. By the time Haga flipped the _Man Eater Bug_ he needed, he was looking very pink and uncomfortable in just his shirt and shorts, though he had modestly pulled the long tails of his shirt over his thighs. This should have seemed weird, but Ryuzaki had awarded Haga the hypothetical medal for the most ridiculously, furiously, sulkily, bad-natured striptease in history - when Haga had lost his suspenders in a direct attack on his lifepoints, Ryuzaki genuinely thought Haga might attempt to throttle him with them. 

However his equanimity returned immediately as _Anata_ went to the graveyard, and Haga laughed raucously as Ryuzaki pulled his T-shirt over his head and shook his hair free. "This is it, this is where your destruction begins." 

Privately, Ryuzaki agreed with him, as he'd had to keep sacrificing his own monsters to keep _Anata_ on the field and so hadn't managed to build up anything in reserve, but what he said was, "Yeah, keep fantasising." His bravado didn't help much when Haga started his _Ultimate Insect_ cycle again the next turn and Ryuzaki was fumbling self-consciously over every aspect of taking his jeans off - the button, the zipper, hitching his ass off the floor and carefully pulling them down without taking his underwear with them, slipping them over his knees and awkwardly extracting each foot. 

He didn't look at Haga until he'd finished. Haga was gazing at him serenely under lowered eyelids, his expression completely unreadable. "I end my turn," he said quietly.

Ryuzaki had no luck on the draw and could only put a card in defence mode and end his turn. It was so obvious that this card, which represented his boxershorts, his modesty, his dignity, was so clearly going to die when _Ultimate Insect_ levelled up that Haga paused with a raised eyebrow before drawing. "Sure?" he said.

"Get on with it," Ryuzaki huffed, letting some of his hair flop over his reddening face.

 _Ultimate Insect_ did its job and Ryuzaki took a deep breath and dutifully tugged his shorts off. And, wow, he felt more exposed than he had ever been in his life. He couldn't look at Haga as he tried to find a way to draw his knees up that preserved his modesty from most angles. He wasn't hard exactly, but he wasn't entirely soft either and he could only hope that Haga wasn't looking too carefully.

"Well," Haga said with a light, pleased, almost kind little chuckle, "I guess I win."

"What?!" Ryuzaki said, his head snapping up to meet Haga's gaze defiantly. "I don't think so. I've still got life points left - more life points than you, actually. We never said anything about not playing until defeat."

"Are you serious? You want to carry on the game in...i-in the buff?"

"Yes, I'm serious," Ryuzaki said, shaking his hair out of his face. "And, in fact, that card was _Exploder Dragon_ and your fool ass just killed it. So stop staring at my dick, put your damn _Ultimate Insect_ in the graveyard where it belongs, and get to work on those buttons. You owe me a shirt."

Haga opened and shut his mouth, and then, apparently unable to find an argument for once, quickly undid his shirt and slipped it off. He sat back down rather primly in just his shorts. As he reached for his cards, he cast an eye over his empty monster and magic zone, breathed hard and then drew. He gazed at the card silently for quite a long time.

"You gonna play that?"

"I'm thinking," he murmured.

"Well, think h-" Ryuzaki nearly said 'harder', but realised that wasn't the greatest choice of words when he currently had an awkward semi hovering just off his thigh, so made a last minute save to, "-faster."

Haga thankfully didn't notice. He was too busy staring at his card with a furrowed brow. "I am."

"Dude."

"Yes, I'm working something out."

"You've got one card."

"I know." Haga scratched his temple and unconsciously ruffled his hair up on one side.

"Do something with it before I get frostbite."

"Fine!" Haga said, dropping his hand back down and rolling his eyes. "I end my turn."

"Wow, you got nothin'?" Ryuzaki teased.

"Shut up and get on with _your_ turn."

Ryuzaki's mouth was dry when he drew. He _really, really_ wanted a monster card and he didn't know how he should feel about that, because it meant that he really, really wanted them both to be naked. He gave Haga a glance, drew, and then somewhat guiltily dropped _Sabersaurus_ into his monster zone. "You don't have to-"

"Fuck you," Haga said, turning up his nose. "Anyway, I don't know why you're talking as if I've lost." And with that, he swiped his glasses off and carefully put them up on the TV table out of harm's way.

"Wow," Ryuzaki said, laughing, as Haga re-took his place. "Wow, you're desperate. You're actually going to play the game blind?"

"I'm short-sighted, not blind, you utter moron."

"Can you even see the board?"

"Of course I can."

"Can you actually see what's _on_ the board?"

"I _know_ what's on the board," Haga said. His pale blue eyes looked much larger without the optical effect of his lenses, and he looked much more serious without a huge moth parked in the centre of his face. It was strange how much harder his glare seemed, even though Ryuzaki knew Haga couldn't actually see what he was glaring at, and he felt his pulse rise a little. "Look, I don't even need to see to beat you. I'm going to win this ridiculous charade of a game with my dignity intact. Are you ending your turn? Good." 

He drew and squinted at his card. After a minute of straining every optical muscle he possessed, he made a face and put the card a comically small distance from the surface of one eyeball, and didn't seem to like the look of it any better. 

"Shut up," he said with an actual pout at Ryuzaki's chuckle. "How much attack does your dumb shit have, anyway? Is it nineteen hundred or eighteen fifty?"

Ryuzaki sat back with a grin. "Dude, I'm not going to tell you, because I know you, and I know you know how much attack it has, and I know it doesn't matter, because you've got nothing, and you're stalling, and you've lost."

"I...might not have."

"You have. It's OK. Take your shorts off and join me in shame."

Haga sighed and put his card face up on the floor - an equip spell - and said, finally, "Fine. You win."

He glared at Ryuzaki's general direction for a second and then rose up onto his knees and slipped his shorts down and off in a surprisingly elegant gesture. It probably wasn't fair, because Haga had managed to keep his own gaze politely on Ryuzaki's face, but with the knowledge that Haga couldn't really see him, he couldn't help but look, properly look at Haga. His downcast blue eyes shadowed under his curtain of hair, the vivid red blush creeping down his neck, his ribs shifting up and down with his breath, his collarbone and hip bones shadowed in high definition from having absolutely zero muscle tone, his thin wrists modestly crossed over his legs without actually covering himself, his nearly-invisible pale body hair, his stiffening cock.

Haga seemed to read his mind, because he said defiantly, "if you fucking laugh at me, I'm out of here, and I'll never talk to you again." 

"Dude, I'm not laughing. Seriously, put your glasses back on."

Haga gladly shoved his glasses back into place and then nearly choked laughing when he saw that Ryuzaki's cock was ramrod hard, standing straight up against his stomach.

"Well, fucking thanks for not laughing at me! You total hypocrite!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Haga said, wiping his eyes and marshalling his features back to something approaching gravity. "I wasn't laughing at _you_. I just wasn't expecting..." he gestured vaguely "...that. I don't know why. I forgot you're an absolute animal." He apparently realised he was staring directly at his friend's cock still, and switched to staring at the ceiling. "So," he said, and cleared his throat.

"Yeah?"

"What now?" He shot the ceiling a wry look. "Did you have some sort of endgame in mind when you suggested this?"

Ryuzaki went hot all over. "I never in a million years thought we'd actually get, you know, naked."

"Neither did I," Haga said, and added, quite unnecessarily, "you're really hard." He still sounded a little surprised about it.

"Yeah. I...this..." Ryuzaki stumbled over how to say that he thought he might die if he didn't do something about it soon. He could feel the sweat actually beading on his neck. "This isn't going to go on its own. Sorry. If you want to leave-"

"Oh, awesome idea, yes, I'll just put my clothes back on and stroll out of here like this. I'm sure no one will notice." Haga nervously rubbed his hand over his face. He was thoroughly hard too, now.

"Well, you can always use the bathroom?"

"Ryuzaki, if you think I'm going carry my erection down the corridor and jerk it off in the squalid shared bathroom of the nastiest hotel I've ever been near, you don't know me at all. _You_ go use the bathroom." 

"No way, I...I can't. I just..." He gave up trying to explain what he needed to do and just did it. Without further ado, he made a defeated noise, leant back against the footboard of the bed, and started to jerk himself off with a gasp of relief.

Haga just gaped at him for a long moment, biting his lip, apparently too stunned to do anything else. Then Haga sighed, turned to lean side-by-side next to him against the footboard, closed his eyes and followed suit.

"This is your fault," he said in almost his normal voice, though his breathing was hard. "The depths of depravity you push me too are astounding - my mother will be forever shamed if she hears about this. Her darling son-"

"Dude, don't bring your Mom into this."

"I'm not, I'm just saying that with the decent upbringing I-"

Ryuzaki rolled his eyes. Haga often got nervously talkative in awkward situations, but surely not _now_. "Are you going to talk all the way through?"

"Ugh, fine," Haga said. He managed ten complete seconds of silence then added chattily, "wow, you really go rough with yourself."

"Then stop looking at me if it bothers you."

"I'm not looking at you," Haga said quickly. "I just...you make a lot of noise."

"So do you."

That seemed to end the conversation for a little bit, but Ryuzaki discovered that silence wasn't actually that preferable, because it meant he had nothing to do but not look at Haga in his peripheral vision, who was stroking himself off in quite a leisurely way with his eyes half-closed behind his misted-up glasses, while not listening to Haga's quickening breath, while simultaneously trying very hard not to make any noise himself.

"I can't believe we're doing this," he said, shutting his eyes when he heard how unsteady his voice sounded.

"No, not like this," Haga said.

Ryuzaki side-eyed him. "What does _that_ mean?"

"Well, I thought you'd attempt something like this with me sometime, but I thought even you'd be a bit more subtle about it than just touching yourself in front of me."

"Oh my god, your ego is out of control," Ryuzaki said. They'd had a lot of practice at arguing, but he was still surprised how easy it was even in this particular context. "You were hard too." 

"Yes, but you engineered the whole thing."

"No way, you were insisting on a stake and I was trying to make you back down."

"Well, you know full well I'm pathologically unable to back down from even the stupidest challenges."

"What, so it's my fault because you're a-, a-, fuck-" he broke off.

"A what?"

"Would you shut up for two minutes?!"

"Why? Can't you-"

Ryuzaki made a choked noise before he managed, "because I'm gonna cum, that's why."

"Oh," Haga said, and then added politely, "er, go ahead."

There was a moment of awkward silence before Haga said, "I thought you were going to come?"

"Well, I _was_." Ryuzaki said and, simultaneously suffering a desperately hard erection and crushing performance anxiety, wished wistfully that he had a hand free to smack Haga in the back of the head with. "You keep putting me off."

"Well, good, because I wanted to say, I really don't think it's fair to blame me for any of this. I mean, this scenario has you written all over it."

"Me?! How?"

"Just look at it. If I engineered a situation where we masturbated together it would at least be in a _nice_ hotel room. And I wouldn't make you pay for your own dinner first, that's just tacky. The whole thing would be classier."

Ryuzaki snorted. "Sorry, what, would you like me to put on some smooth jazz and treat you like a real lady?"

"Actually, yes, that would be nicer."

Ryuzaki opened and shut his mouth a few times and then gave up; even at the best of times he wouldn't have known where to start with _that_. "Oh, fuck, that's it," he said and, having paused to spit in the palm of his hand, began to work himself off decisively. "I'm going to make myself cum right now just so we can stop talking about this."

He let the tension drop a little and, slipping into a slouch with his head back, letting his knees spread apart, eyes shut, he roughly worked himself off, simultaneously embarrassed and turned on to know he was being observed, until he finally came onto his stomach with a hoarse "fuck!"

The relief was short-lived as then he had nothing else to focus on but the little hitched gasps and squeaks Haga made as he worked himself briskly to completion. Haga came quite hard, mostly into his hand, and then burst into breathy giggles. From nerves, Ryuzaki realised; Haga was more nervous than he thought, and looked extremely shy as they finally made eye contact, face flushed and eyes hazy - it was sort of cute, Ryuzaki thought.

The moment broke and they started sorting their clothes back out. 

"I can't find my top," Ryuzaki said.

"Oh," Haga said, clearing his throat. "I just picked up something at random to wipe my hands clean. I didn't realise it was your shirt." For some reason he politely handed it back to Ryuzaki, and for some reason Ryuzaki accepted it. They exchanged a glance.

"You make everything so fucking awkward," Ryuzaki said, hastily dropping it aside.

"Maybe you shouldn't invite me to play your peculiar sex games then," Haga said, blushing and brusquely pulling his socks back on. "Still, at least I won."

"You won what? Jerking off?"

"Yes, I lasted longer."

Ryuzaki had been halfway into his hoodie, and scrambled the rest of the way through so he could pop his head out and stare at Haga. "Oh my god. Do you have to make everything into a competition? You have more issues that the fucking National Geographic."

Haga shrugged. "The point stands."

"Well, fine. Congratulations on being the biggest wanker," he said. Haga looked annoyed but pleased, as if he haughtily accepted the honour of the title.

Ryuzaki finished dressing long before Haga, so had nothing to do but sit on the end of the bed and pointedly avoid watching Haga adjust his suspenders, neatly clip his tie back into place, knot his shoelaces. It felt extremely like they had just had some sort one night stand and Ryuzaki didn't know how to feel about that.

"So," he said, once Haga was dressed.

"Yes?"

"That happened."

"Yeah."

There was a long moment where they just stood and stared at one another and could have said some things but didn't.

"Well, I should get going," Haga said, abruptly flapping into action and gathering up his bags and umbrella. He hesitated with his hand on the doorknob and glanced back, and again it felt like the end of an uncomfortable but not entirely unsuccessful date. "See you tomorrow."

"Yeah, see you then," Ryuzaki said. "Good luck."

Haga gave him an amused glance. "Same to you," he said, and shut the door behind him.

He stared at the back of the door a long time after it had closed.

 

\--------------------------------

At the semi finals the next day, Haga casually took off his jacket when his first monster went to the graveyard. Ryuzaki played very distractedly and lost the match.


End file.
